Miyamoto and Aonuma on Zelda

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The two masterminds divulge all about the latest Zelda.

By IGN Staff

Today Nintendo held its Zelda Gamers Junket in Seattle, Washington. With a little inspiration from Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the event was held seaside thanks the Edgewater Inn's wall of glass windows in the meeting room. We were allowed to spend some time with the game, but won't be able to bring you details until a later date. Stay tuned for that.

Complimenting the hands-on experience, we were allowed to participate in a roundtable discussion with the two main forces behind The Wind Waker. Director Eiji Aonuma and producer Shigeru Miyamoto, who directed the originals including Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, joined us from Japan via video teleconferencing. The two talked about the projects beginnings, its place in the Zelda timeline, the possibility of a sequel, and much more.

Following is our full transcription of the translation offered by Bill Trinen of Nintendo of America.

Shigeru Miyamoto opened, "Good evening everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I know you've all played the game a little bit. I would have liked to have an English version ready for you all today, but unfortunately I've been very busy. It's been about two and a half years since Majora's Mask was released, and of course it was more realistic in visual style, but now we have a completely new Zelda ready. I think considering that we started from scratch -- it has completely new graphics and gameplay -- the fact that we completed this in two and a half years is a really good pace for a Zelda game. I'm kind of relieved that, as I promised, we were able to complete the game and launch it in Japan by the end of the year. Although, I do have some regret that we weren't able to do that for the U.S. version.

"But in Japan this year, while we do have Zelda, we do not have Metroid, which is obviously a large title that the U.S. had for the year-end. Also, this time around for Zelda I think the story is more in-depth and the characters that appear in the game have a lot more to them. So, we are going to take some time to localize these properly to the U.S. and have it out early next year. I apologize.

"This time around I'm not actually director of the game, I'm the producer. Mr. Eiji Aonuma sitting here to my right is the director. It's actually nice to be able to sit as producer on this game. I've been working with Mr. Aonuma since the Ocarina of Time. On Majora's Mask he was pretty much independent in moving that project along. So it's been very easy for me as producer on this game as well as Majora. As a producer, there are a few different types of roles I play. One of them is getting involved early on and being involved in meetings to decide direction. Then the type of work that I do is to really get involved later on in development, involving myself in the fine tuning and helping to make changes for improvement. This time around it was actually quite easy -- a lot of meetings were held throughout development and we didn't have a whole lot of changes to the game spec. In the end, it wasn't so much me coming in and having to change things around, so much as it was just me being there to give input and make sure the quality was there. It was easy for me in that sense. For me personally it's been great because it's given me a different flavor of development rather than creating everything myself. It's also given me some insight into other aspects of development that I didn't have a chance to see up until then.

"Of course, with the Zelda games they have a long history. There's a very strong sense to the world that is the Legend of Zelda. I think that really this time the GameCube game we did an excellent job of bringing out that flavor. As well as enhancing the whole aspect of you going into this world, interacting with it, and experiencing it. I think we've really done a great job."

Since the debut of The Legend of Zelda in 1987, all of Link's games have been the stuff of legends -- universally appealing adventures that emerged as beloved triumphs of gameplay, presentation, innovation, graphics and fun. In the ninth entry in the series, Link debuts on GCN with a fun new look, but the game is still serious about adventure.